December 2017

If recessions, droughts, hurricanes, and wildfires can't keep Christmas from coming, what makes you think you can? Nothing that is going on in your life right now, nothing that is going on in our country or world right now, can keep God's love from coming in the flesh. Christmas comes even when we don't have any money or any energy and when we feel like we are losing our sanity. Even if the worst happens and we have to cancel the celebration, God's not going to cancel the incarnation.

Though their circumstances were very different, all these women—Miriam, Deborah, Hannah, and Mary—sang about their struggles with the forces of evil. For Miriam, it was Pharoah's army. For Deborah, it was the Canaanite king. For Hannah, it was all the women who ridiculed her for not having children. For the unwed Mary, it was everyone who was going to question her story. Here is my question: how could these women do battle every day with the evil and injustice of life and still sing for joy?

Call it hormones or call it sisterhood or call it the Holy Spirit, but somehow they have found an inner strength that enables them to en-joy, to enter into joy, despite the fear their pregnancies have caused them, despite the heart-ache those boys will bring them.
Mothers of healthy babies are lucky; they get to carry joy around in their bodies. But all of us—men, too—carry the potential for joy inside of us, even if we don't know it or can't feel it. Even if no brain scan or ultrasound will reveal it.